engleski

The present and the future of research-industry cooperation in Croatia - the case of translation quality

The paper addresses potential modes of cooperation between academic institutions and the translation industry in Croatia, a new member state of the EU. In Croatia, the forms of cooperation between training and research institutions and translations services providers are in their infancy, with almost no institutionalized links established. Therefore, one of the aims of this paper is to contribute to the promotion of the cooperation with regard to the specific area of translation quality, where this gap is acutely felt. The paper will first present a report on the present state of relations between academic institutions and the main actors in the growing translation industry in Croatia. The proposed research involves a series of questionnaires and face-to-face interviews with translation services providers on one hand and their users on the other. The questionnaires and interviews with translation services providers are conducted with a view to establishing their criteria of translation quality and methods used to satisfy them. To be more specific, the questions comprise the issues of the use of quality assurance methods like revision and tools such as Xbench, methods of quality evaluation, certification to EN 15038 and its implementation in practice, the knowledge of the relevant literature and its usefulness, as well as the translation services providers’ attitudes towards translation quality. The range of providers approached will include large and small size companies and translation departments in state-owned institutions, such as ministries and government agencies. The aim of the second set of questionnaires and face-to-face interviews conducted with translation services users is to establish their views on the quality of translation products. The data obtained from the two sets of questionnaires and interviews are analyzed in order to work out the details of future cooperation in this field: establishment of criteria for quality assessment applicable in both academic and professional contexts, joint organization of workshops on translation quality targeted to translation services providers, raising awareness of translation products users about translation quality criteria and the benefits of obtaining quality products. The results serve to establish a framework for concrete cooperation in the area of translation quality, with a view to extending it to other areas of interest to both academic researchers and translation providers and users.

translation industry ; translation quality ; academic research

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